Religion of feeling, religion of thinking

I’ve written before in this space about the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his work on moral intuition and the differences between liberals and conservatives. See here and here for background — really, if you’ve never seen this stuff, it’s well worth your time. I’m not going to post on the basics of Haidt’s ideas again. But there’s a new piece on him in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and it contains something I hadn’t seen before. Keep in mind that Haidt identifies as a political and cultural liberal, and an atheist. Excerpt:

Meanwhile, though Haidt still supports President Obama, he chides Democrats for a moral vision that alienates many working-class, rural, and religious voters. Though he’s an atheist, he lambasts the liberal scientists of New Atheism for focusing on what religious people believe rather than how religion binds them into communities. And he rakes his own social-psychology colleagues over the coals for being “a tribal moral community that actively discourages conservatives from entering” and for making the field’s nonliberal members feel like closeted homosexuals. (See related article, Page B8.)

“Liberals need to be shaken,” Haidt tells me. They “simply misunderstand conservatives far more than the other way around.”

But even as Haidt shakes liberals, some thinkers argue that many of his own beliefs don’t withstand scrutiny. Haidt’s intuitionism overlooks the crucial role reasoning plays in our daily lives, says Bloom. Haidt’s map of innate moral values risks putting “a smiley face on authoritarianism,” says John T. Jost, a political psychologist at NYU. Haidt’s “relentlessly self-deceived” understanding of faith makes it seem as if God and revelation were somehow peripheral issues in religion, fumes Sam Harris, one of “theFour Horsemen“ of New Atheism and author ofThe End of Faith.

“This is rather like saying that uncontrolled cell growth is a peripheral issue in cancer biology,” Harris e-mails me. “Haidt’s analysis of cancer could go something like this: ‘Sure, uncontrolled cell growth is a big concern, but there’s so much more to cancer! There’s chemotherapy and diagnostic imaging and hospice care and drug design. There are all the changes for good and ill that happen in families when someone gets diagnosed with a terminal illness. … ‘ Yes, there are all these things, but what makes cancer cancer?”

I think Harris is being inaccurate and unfair — and, as I will shortly explain, the grounds for my saying that undermines something I would prefer to believe.

I used to believe that the theoretical part of religion was a lot more important than it actually is in the lives of religious people. In fact, I think Harris and I would probably agree, as unlikely as that sounds, that it ought to be. This is why I’m always going on about the curse of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Whatever it is, it’s not authentic Christianity, not by the historical and doctrinal standards defining orthodox (small-o) Christian belief. If we Christians declare that tradition is not binding on us in any meaningful way, that we are free to believe about our faith whatever “works” for us, then we are theologically bankrupt. I find it easier in some ways to understand the atheist who believes it’s all nonsense than the self-described Christian who takes what he wants but ignores the rest, especially the hard stuff. To be clear, I don’t believe that only saints are authentically Christian. I sin. We all sin. I struggle to understand many of the teachings of the faith. But I don’t decide, on my own authority, that I don’t have to believe this thing or that thing, because it’s too difficult, or it doesn’t “work” for me. I am not a good Christian, but I can make that judgment because I have a clear standard of what a good Christian is — a standard that exists independent of my own preferences and moods.

But.

I have come to understand that religion as it is lived in the real world is a far less propositional phenomenon than I used to think. I mean, I have come to understand that the heart of religion has less to do with propositions than I believed. The great sociologist of religion Robert Bellah, in an interview about his landmark book “Religion in Human Evolution,” had the following exchange with me last year:

TR: Your discussion of “enactive representation” — the idea that you have to do a thing to learn about it — suggests that religion can only really be understood from the inside, through its practice — this, as distinct from trying to grasp it as a set of propositions. Is this why secular-minded people have such trouble understanding the religious mindset today? And, if religious truth can only be essentially grasped through enactive representation, doesn’t that mean that there is a limit to what can be communicated across religious traditions?

RB: When I said above that religion is a way of life more than a way of knowing, I was suggesting the importance of embodied practice, in the beginning ritual, as the most basic form of religious action. The emergence of language led to narrative or, if some scientists are right, the need for myth as a comprehensive story of the general order of existence led to language, so myth joins ritual as a fundamental component of religion. When theoretical inquiry joins the mimetic and mythic culture of earlier ages in the religions that develop in the Axial Age, it does not reject ritual and myth but only criticizes inadequate forms of them and makes possible the rituals and narratives of all the great traditions. This has led some religious people and many secular people to think that religion is only another form of theory alongside philosophy and science. But while understanding the theoretical achievements of the great traditions is important we will not really know what they are about unless we make the imaginative effort to see how the world might seem if we lived in the embodied practices and narratives of these traditions, a difficult but not impossible task. Indeed it is the joy of the study or religion to undertake this imaginative task.

Religion, in this view, is more about what we do, and do in community, than what we think about what we do. This is not to devalue the value of ideas, and their role in shaping our practice. But it is to downplay them, at least a bit, and put them into a certain perspective. Myth is inadequate without ritual, and ritual is inadequate without myth. There is a dynamic interplay between the forces. And this is where I think Haidt has more insight into how religion works than Harris does. Haidt grasps, I think, that before we even consider certain ideas, they have to pass through an unconscious emotional sieve before we can rationally grapple with them. In a fascinating Templeton symposium on whether or not moral action depends on reason, the eminent neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga says:

Third (and perhaps most surprising to everyday experience), all decision processes resulting in behaviors, no matter what their category, are carried out before one becomes consciously aware of them. Whether driven by internally determined and evolved structures or by learning and experience, these behaviors are executed by the brain in an orderly and automatic way. Given this uniformity in moral choices and in brain processes, why, then, do experimental subjects supply such a diverse set of reasons for their behavior?

This question is answered by the fourth discovery. There is a special device, usually in the brain’s left hemisphere, which seeks to understand the rationale behind the pattern of behavior observed in others and/or oneself. It is called the “interpreter” and concocts a story that appears to fit the variable behaviors in question. It follows from this that, since everyone has widely different experiences upon which to draw, the interpretation one comes up with will vary widely as well.

Knowing that the brain carries out its work before we are consciously aware of an action does not and should not lead one to conclude that we are not to be held personally responsible for our behavior. The very concept of personal responsibility implies that one is participating in a social group whose rules can be learned. When our brains integrate the myriad information that goes into a decision to act, prior learned rules of behavior are part of that information flow. In the vast number of decisions that a brain makes, playing by the rules usually pays off.

So, the practices of our community and the stories we tell help our unconscious brains decide which propositions seem rational to us. Our emotional instincts — both inborn and learned — are bound to play a role too, don’t you think?

To refocus, I prefer to believe, like the atheist Sam Harris does, in a more or less rational correspondence between belief and behavior. But we humans are messier than that. If Jon Haidt is focusing more on religion as what people who call themselves religious do instead of what they believe (or say they believe), then his conclusions make more sense. Jesus Christ was not a theology professor. The other day, I was talking to a good friend who is one of the most serious believers I know. He works in a hospital, and sees a lot of suffering every day. He is also a very conservative Christian. He said (I’m paraphrasing from memory), “In the end, it’s all about relationships. Look at the Gospels. Jesus taught, but he always taught within the context of establishing a relationship with the people. He loved them, and he taught them. But first he loved them.”

As my longtime readers know, I’m deeply concerned about the loss, in the current era, of a sense of religious orthodoxy — that is, the belief that religion makes objective truth claims. If religion becomes imbalanced towards the relational and the therapeutic, it will lose its essence. This is the danger Moralistic Therapeutic Deism poses to authentic Christianity. As the sociologist of religion Christian Smith wrote:

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is also about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents. This is not a religion of repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of a sovereign divine, of steadfastly saying one’s prayers, of faithfully observing high holy days, of building character through suffering, of basking in God’s love and grace, of spending oneself in gratitude and love for the cause of social justice, etc. Rather, what appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with other people.

Smith summarizes what, for the American teens he interviewed for his study, is the whole of religion: “Just don’t be an asshole.” That’s a far cry from what Jesus said is the whole of religion: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind [and] love your neighbor as you love yourself.” MTD is a simulacrum of Christianity, and therefore more dangerous than outright atheism. Better to have a thousand Christopher Hitchenses lined up against you than one gifted MTD pastor.

But, as Philip Rieff so brilliantly diagnosed nearly 50 years ago, we live in a therapeutic age, one particularly characterized by the power of emotion to determine human affairs. (Rieff also said in the book that there are worse ways to live; “Just don’t be an asshole” is better than many alternatives). The therapeutic mindset is deeply corrosive of the fundamentals of Christian faith, as Rieff showed. But like it of not, that’s the age we live in. This is why Haidt’s work is so illuminating, I think. Because emotions, not rationality, are so determinative of our thoughts and actions, it’s important to have a better understanding of the different emotional orientations that inform political and religious stances. This is not to supplant rationality, but to have a better understanding of its limits. If you wish to persuade people who disagree with you, and who do not understand or intuit the rules of rational discourse and argumentation — and that’s very many people these days, on the left and the right, as many of us will have experienced — you need to understand how they think. It seems to me that this is all Haidt is saying. Like other prominent New Atheists, Sam Harris has an almost autistic faith in the power and role of reason, and a corresponding hatred for those who don’t fit into the rigid rationalist frames he has fitted for them. I think of a story my mother tells about me, in kindergarten, standing inside the great room at Jackson Hall, overcome by anger and frustration when my classmates marched counterclockwise when I wanted them to march clockwise. This is a temptation intellectually-oriented people have: an urge to interpret the world as an expression of syllogism, theory, idealism, rationality. In fact, intuition and emotion are far more important than we prefer to think — especially in an era in psychological history that privileges intuition and emotion.

I hope I’ve been clear here: I am not dismissing rationality, or the importance of theory. If I were, I wouldn’t care about MTD, when in fact I think it’s the deadliest enemy of Christianity there is. I am only trying to convey why Jonathan Haidt’s work has been so important to me in helping me to understand how others think, and why others think what they do, in this era. And why I myself think as I do. And why liberals and conservatives today constantly talk past each other.

Regarding MTD, it really should be seen as part of the interplay between the dichotomy of theory (what we think about what we do) and practice (what we do). The only way to make sense of MTD is to see it as “theory exhaustion.” The 20th century has exhibited some of the worst excesses of theory (Communism, Naziism, racism, etc.), and we are just sick and tired of it all. So theory is rejected, and what is left over is MTD. It may not be a healthy state of affairs, but it is certainly a natural reaction against “theory excess” of the 20th century.

Will, remember, this is not a description of ideal Christianity. It is a sociological description of generic religion — that is, how religion works as a sociological phenomenon. I’m pretty sure you and I would both agree that this isn’t what Christianity teaches, but I think we would also agree, however reluctantly, that that’s what Christianity often *is*, in practice.

The criticism of MTD is as nebulous as the concept. Given that it was elaborated based upon the study of children’s religious beliefs, I am not shocked that it appears to be immature religious belief, lacking most notably in confrontation with the problem of evil. It is a function of the fact that our society is largely nominally Christian, that people who hold these immature beliefs are also nominally Christian and misidentify these “MTD” beliefs as Christianity. I do not think that it presents a grave threat to Christianity itself.

It is unthinkable that these children might go on to clerical or academic careers in theology without the benefit of further reflection and personal experience forcing them to confront the idea and practice of evil. The vast majority who don’t pursue such careers are still likely to develop religiously if they give religion any thought at all, or else become outright agnostics and atheists, which would itself be a development.

I confess that the neuroscience blockquote sounds like a lot of academic gobbledygook to me, but maybe I’m just not smart enough to get it.

All the reason and highly sound logical arguments in the world won’t reach the average human being, who is primarily affected by relationships with particular, specific individuals, and by stories or narratives. I say this as someone who enjoys philosophy and Liar Lunatic Lord-type logical puzzles. There’s a reason that the main teaching tools for transmitting the meaning of life are stories, with specific characters living specific lives and making specific choices with specific consequences. The Gospels, etc.

I agree that modern life has gone overboard with theory and has radically diminished the role of… I don’t know if I would say “ritual,” but I like what your conservative hospital employee friend said — “relationships.” To the extent that ritual involves spending time with other people, over a long period, doing something together, then yes, ritual.

A recent book published by Eric Klinenberg, which was just written up in the Wall Street Journal, discusses the fact that more people live alone (at least in the West) than ever.

I think the best thing to remember in overcoming MTD is St. Augustine’s understanding of how we come to grow in the Church: faith seeks understanding, and understanding seeks faith. A real, working faith should inspire one to come to know better what has given him that faith. As understanding grows, one should desire to commit in an ever deeper way to that which is being understood.

I follow these discussions with great interest, even while observing my personal “failure” to engage in some of the details.

Modern Paganisms hallmark, compared to other established religions, and not just the Abrahamic traditions, is that it is visceral. It starts as an experiential exercise.

I observed prior to my introduction to MTD that the therapeutic “pitfalls” (as I would label them) were and are rife in Paganism. Some Pagans, myself included, point to the New Age metaphysics as a cause, but I’ve come to believe that to be a sympton of a deeper truth: Humans for the most part don’t have the energy or time to spend contemplating the universe. They are rightly focused on the day-to-day requirements of just living. I submit that dogma — a word I use with pejorative connotations, just so the reader knows — is an extreme (in relative terms) reaction to that lack, providing easy access to spiritual truths without the need for personal, rational investment.

I offer as comparison the large numbers and significant public profile of New Age mindsets, vs the much fewer and less visible Pagans with whom I’m acquainted. The difference is the same: New Age purports to provide answers. Pagans (as I define them) put in the hard work and the long time to find what they seek. The “dedication” traditions, who acknowledge advancement in steps rather than a gradual progression, commonly use “a year and a day” as the minimum time measurement for advancement. MTD is here and now, much as the concept of being born again. It happens, boom, done.

In short, MTD is the reaction to the other extreme of dogma. It serves the same purpose and function, but otherwise stands in opposition to it.

The great Christopher Lasch was also saying much the same things a generation ago but his voice was also drowned by the din of the two ignorant armies psyching themselves up for round 1 of the culture war.

But if you bitterly resent accusations of ‘Christianism’ as unfair how do you think we liberal Protestants and Catholics think about your characterisation of MTD?

‘MTD is a simulacrum of Christianity, and therefore more dangerous than outright atheism’.

Is an ‘MTD pastor’ – that is to say an actual ordained priest or minister of a historic church – really not a Christian at all (however mistaken he may be on whichever theological points he disagrees on with whatever church you currently find yourself in during your own spiritual quest) but only a diabolical imitator of one?

This seems to me an extraordinarily un-Christian view: we are all radically imperfect and groping towards an often very dim light – some are drawn towards the false light of MTD and all too many others to a viciously politicised Christianist theocratism – but they are still on the same continuum of imperfection as the rest of us.

It would be so much easier if faith were indeed just another team sport where we can loudly cheer on our side and mock and revile the opposition (and perhaps applaud them occasionally when they show particular skill or sportsmanship?) and pretend that all our shortcomings will be ironed out for next week’s game – but it’s so much more important than that.

Roger, MTD is not a liberal or a conservative phenomenon. It transcends that. I don’t know how much you’ve read about it, but it makes any kind of prophetic stance based on Christian teaching — from speaking out against abortion, to speaking out against greed, to speaking out against persecution of immigrants, to speaking out against war — impossible. The summit of religious life becomes being nice and feeling good about yourself. That’s not Biblical religion.

This is very interesting, but I am struggling to understand it. For instance, is Michael Gazzaniga describing what a Christian would call conscience? I say that because your conscience is formed by practice and learning – and you don’t exactly think about the reasoning or theory behind why a particular action is right or wrong.

Good post, Rod; I find much to be sympathetic with. There’s another strain I’ve noticed that might be somewhere between small-o orthodoxy and MTD which a relative of mine calls “Jesus is my bff” – a huge meme among young Christians lately has been “I hate religion but I love God/Jesus.” It seems the idea is that if you go searching for doctrine you’ll be led astray because god wants you to open your heart and follow where he leads it; clouding your mind with religious content will keep you from pursuing this personal relationship because you’re using your mind not your heart, etc.

I sympathize with this especially:
“This is a temptation intellectually-oriented people have: an urge to interpret the world as an expression of syllogism, theory, idealism, rationality.”

I went from my evangelical upbringing, through Eastern Orthodoxy, and finally to something like atheism, because the most important question to me was always “but is it true?” I suppose that makes me a dreaded “new atheist,” but I still think there’s a great deal to learn from the sociology of religion. I see the relationship of community building to religion rather like I do the relationship of Dumbo to his magic feather – there are senses in which one can say Dumbo needed his feather to fly, and never needed it in the first place because he was doing it by himself all along.

One more thing – there’s another meme that went around the atheist circles recently, which is the “straw vulcan,” or the false idea that “rationality” is embodied by someone like Mr. Spock. A lot of people have been making the case that it’s in fact impossible to be rational without taking into account the emotion and intuition. And in many cases it’s rational to rely on emotion and intuition (e.g. when there’s no time to make a full analysis of a situation). Sorry to post so much on your threads recently.

On the other hand, what if MTD is the Truth? What if The Problem Of Evil is really just an exercise in wishful thinking and there is really not a problem, merely a series of uncomfortable events and behaviors which in the eye of Universe don’t actually matter at all.

What if the prophetic voice is merely a bellow blowing hot air? It could be that the true summit of religious life is just feeling good about yourself and everything that has been attached to Biblical religion and its practices has really been nothing more than stuff put there to make people feel good about themselves while not actually knowing it.

It’s our bias towards intellectualism or knowledge. Not that either is bad, but to paraphrase, orthodoxy without orthopraxy is dead. Not all religions even HAVE God and revelation as we of the Abrahamic tradition understand it. But these religions still inform the lives of their adherents. And religion is still a vital part of most human cultures, regardless of form. Without having read any more than you have posted here, I suggest that Haidt, as an outsider to religion, is taking this broader view. Even those of us who profess that orthodox Christianity to be most true of these traditions in all their great diversity understand that the living faith is a matter of the heart. You can mentally affirm all the right things, but that won’t save you. A transformation of the heart is the only thing that will do. And that transformations shows not in your words, but your actions.

Rod said, “As inconstant as I’ve been, I still believe that there are truths that exist independently of our subjective perception. But we are condemned to perceive the objective truth subjectively.”

I agree that there are objective truths. But it seems obvious to me that outside of truths that are subject to empirical testing, there’s no agreement about these truths.

Prior to modernity this inconvenient fact could be swept under the rug due to lack of knowledge about other cultures and compulsion by the state and religious authorities. But for the time being that can’t happen, so religious dogma is suffering.

I think people want to believe in God because they fear meaningless lives in a meaningless universe. So it seems that low dogma MTDish religion is a logical outgrowth of modernity.

Can you actually name any who do not take any position at all with regard to abortion, greed, immigration or war?

And even for those who take no position themselves, if they are pastors they will usually belong to larger churches that do take quite emphatic positions (and while you may not agree with some of the positions taken by liberal churches any more than I do with all of those taken by conservative ones, they are still positions which are generally supported by reference to Christian moral teaching and not some vague new age concept of personal growth).

I don’t deny that MTD is a useful category but I compared it to ‘Christianism’ because it is also getting over-used in an obnoxiously partisan and reductionist way.

Yes at one end of the great continuum there are MTDs who deny that the incarnation or the very concept of a personal deity are anything more than symbols and at the other there are hateful Christianist lunatics screaming homophobic abuse at dead soldiers funerals – but these are the extremes.

I see the Christianists as the greater threat because as a liberal Protestant I will make allowances for those on my side that you’d regard as purveyors of MTD – just as you probably make allowances for those I’d see as hateful Christianists because you know more of and about them and can more clearly see the positives as well as the negatives in their faith.

As for conservative MTDs I am not quite sure who they would be.

Yes there are relentlessly positivistic evangelicals for whom Christianity seems to be only Good News – but if they are in any sense conservative theologically or politically I can’t see how they can be just MTDs with no opinions whatsoever on any divisive issue.

Sorting out what that means for how I live in the world requires a good deal of rational thought.

I feel free to sort out what doctrine (if any) to accept, because I know it was all written by sinful, fallible, mortal men, who had their own ulterior motives for writing as they did. Was John Wycliffe a “moral therapeutic deist” when he wrote that man has no earthly spiritual overlord but Jesus?

I’m a little late to this, but the funny thing is that Haidt’s position is something that theorists in religious studies have been talking about at least since the late 80’s with the publication of Talal Asad’s “Genealogies of Religion” and is dominate at the biggest places, like Harvard Divinity School and Chicago Divinity School (and of course Bellah’s “Habits of the Heart” helped get there too).

The only religion in the world that really focuses on “belief” as one of the main categories is Christianity. Typically, religions do not have creeds, because beliefs are normally not nearly as important as embodied practices in most religions.

And the thing is, despite Will Barret’s assertion that Luther would have a problem with this, that’s not entirely true either. “Faith” in the NT doesn’t have the same connotation as “belief” from the mouth of Sam Harris.

Smith summarizes what, for the American teens he interviewed for his study, is the whole of religion: “Just don’t be an asshole.” That’s a far cry from what Jesus said is the whole of religion: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind [and] love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Man, that juxtaposition really highlights the essential self-centeredness that’s at the squishy, feeble heart of MTD. Great post, Rod.

“than the self-described Christian who takes what he wants but ignores the rest, especially the hard stuff…”

Historically, the movement that became Christianity took from Judaism what it wanted (The God of Israel; ethical standards) and ignored the rest, especially the hard stuff (food laws etc). At some level, everyone is cafeteria.

True, “don’t be an asshole” isn’t exactly a complex theology, or any theology, come to think of it. But I find it interesting how quickly more complex, legalistic theologies find room to sanction asshole-ish behavior. I only wish the world’s religions spent more time teaching their followers to truly not be assholes.

And really, “self-centeredness”? “Don’t be an asshole” has everything to do with how you treat others. Where’s the selfishness in that? (I grant that it says nothing about God, but that’s not in and of itself “self-centered.” It’s “secular,” which seems to be Rod’s point.)

re: It seems the idea is that if you go searching for doctrine you’ll be led astray because god wants you to open your heart and follow where he leads it; clouding your mind with religious content will keep you from pursuing this personal relationship because you’re using your mind not your heart, etc

This isn’t anything new. Revivals over the centuries have always taken this attitude: downplay (or simply ignore) the religious authorities and give yourself to Jesus. You find this going way back. It was part of St Francis’ appeal; it was part of the 4th century development of monasticism. And it has its place too, since it’s all too easy to become the sort of Christian who frets and fusses about rules and doctrine and ritual and misses Christ entirely amid all the minutiae. This is in fact very close to what Jesuys hiself was critucizing in the Pharisees.

Second to what Austin said. Christianity focuses on doctrine and theology to a far greater extent than any other religion.

I will add that in my experience, most people not only don’t understand theology, but don’t have a real concept of theology. They understand religion-as-ritual or religion-as-rules and regulations, but aren’t even aware of religion-as-theology.

I think it’s fair to as why other religions put so much less emphasis on theology and doctrinal orthodoxy than Christianity. In the case of Hinduism and Buddhism, it is because they believe that the absolute and ultimate truth cannot be understood through doctrine or intellect, but only experience. Doctrine can only be relatively true. And its relative truth is the extent to which it brings people closer to the experience of the absolute and ultimate truth.

That doesn’t make them woo religions by any means (although they are often misinterpreted as such in the West). I think your conservative friend in the hospital is not so much a MTD as seeing doctrine in a more Hindu or Buddhist perspective. So maybe the question should be, is such a perspective compatible with Christianity?

Great discussion.I’m still having difficulty connecting Moral Therapeutic Deism to Gazzaniga’s “interpreter.” Are you saying that because the interpreter prefers doing and feeling to thinking, that orthodox religious practice is threatened? But haven’t you often, Mr. Dreher, argued that the vibrant, growing churches are the precisely the ones who demand more of their flock than simply mindless attendance?

I’ve interviewed Gazzaniga; a brilliant man, who greatly admires Haidt’s work, but one point he often makes is that neuroscience is being used to evidence all sorts of theories, many of which can’t even be tested. People tend to give far more credence to an expert waving a brain scan around than they should.

In the first several centuries of the Church, behavior was always assumed to come before doctrine, and the correct interpretation of doctrine presupposed certain behaviors. The clearest proponents of this are monastic writers such as Basil the Great, Evagrius of Pontus and John Cassian, but it is clearly understood this way by anyone influenced by Origen, particularly the Cappadocian Fathers. Anyway, this orientation started to change in the West with the rise of universities and scholasticism, where bodies of doctrine were worked out for coherence. But the training for such work in theology relied less and less on moral foundations. Today, the whole idea that practice and morals comes before belief is very difficult, but I still believe that it works that way. This is a large reason for the secularization of culture: we stop acting in religious ways, and the beliefs come to seem more and more irrelevant.